


Shimmering On Their Skin

by AdamantSteve



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mob, Bad Guy Loki, Drug Use (Past), Gangsters moll! Clint, Guns, M/M, Mob Enforcer!Phil, Multi, People getting shot, Polyamory, Prostitution, Strippers & Strip Clubs, Threesome, Threesome - F/M/M, bad guy Fury, drug use (OCs), established relationship - Clint Barton/Phil Coulson, everyone in this is kind of a bad guy, ex hookers Clint and Natasha, except the main characters, implied torture of a bad guy (loki), later established relationship - Clint/Phil/Natasha, references to forced prostitution, references to violence, some daddykink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-17
Updated: 2013-06-17
Packaged: 2017-12-15 05:46:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/846003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdamantSteve/pseuds/AdamantSteve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil is a mob enforcer, collecting money from people, scaring the crap out of them and generally ensuring that Fury's rule goes unchallenged. Clint is Phil's moll, spoiled rotten and lounging around until he gets called on to help out with whatever Phil needs doing. </p><p>Clint used to be one of Loki's 'girls', part of the vice ring he runs out of a strip club. He kept Phil alive after an encounter with Loki got him stabbed through the chest, leaving them both indebted forever to one another. </p><p>They're an excellent team, even better once Natasha - another of Loki's girls - joins them. Will one last job on the border of Mexico be their undoing or their salvation?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shimmering On Their Skin

**Author's Note:**

> Beta read by Dunicha.
> 
> \--
> 
> Check end notes for spoilery warnings that elaborate on the tags. 
> 
> Since this is an alternate universe and some characters used to be prostitutes, there is _implied_ past nonconsensual sex and drug use. I 'chose not to use archive warnings' as I don't feel that the content of this fic warrants an explicit 'non con' or 'violence' warning, but this is your warning of those things being implied!

Phil hears Clint pull up outside, the gravel of the driveway crunching under the tires of his showy red car. Something warm settles in his stomach as a key turns in the lock - Clint’s home safe. 

 

He agrees for the thousandth time with Fury that yes, Loki really has done it this time, they’re definitely going to see to it that he’s going down as soon as motherfucking possible, and Fury’ll be the one to put the bullet in his head, and Clint wanders in, dropping his keys on the counter before dumping a good half-dozen shopping bags on the couch. 

 

Phil feels a smile spread across his face as Clint makes a show of bending down to untie his shoes, straightening up slowly as he kicks them off before turning and coming over to plant a kiss on his cheek. He goes to straighten back up but Phil catches his shirt and keeps him there, moving his hand to Clint's neck to pull him into a hungry kiss before pulling away to 'uh huh,' again into the phone. "I know," he says, slipping his hand down Clint's body to pull at his belt. "Yeah we're gonna do it tomorrow." He slips a hand beneath Clint's belt to grope at his cock, but can't quite reach. Clint gets a hand between them to undo his belt and the top button of his jeans so that Phil can pull him even closer, pushing his pants down as he cradles the phone in his shoulder and pushes his laptop off of his lap in favour of Clint. "You need us tonight, we can come by tonight," he says in an amenable tone, his impatience well hidden in his voice. By now he has Clint's meaty cock in his grasp properly and he's squeezing and coaxing it into hardness, taking his hand away to push his fingers into Clint's mouth to be slicked up nicely before he goes back to leisurely jerking it. 

 

"Absolutely, sir," Phil says, pushing Clint away from where he's folded himself against him to moan into his neck. Fury doesn't give a fuck what he does or with whom but Phil's never been one for exhibitionism. Well, not of his own exploits anyhow. Clint slides off to sit on the other end of the couch Phil's on, losing his pants on the way so he can sprawl, his legs wide apart to give Phil the very best view. Phil swallows dryly and wishes Fury would shut up already. "Yeah, I saw Tony today, he's good for the pieces for Friday," he tells him, leaning over to run a finger up and over Clint's balls. Clint bites his lip and makes eyes at him. “I don’t need to check up on him, it’s all good,” Phil tells him,  eyes roving ravenously over his boy’s body. 

“Sure thing, boss,” Phil intones, and then finally, _finally_ , he seems to be done. “Eight o’clock, yes, sir. I’ll bring the boy... You too.” 

The call goes dead and he breathes a sigh of relief before turning to Clint, still sprawled there, watching him like a cat. A fucking beautiful, deadly cat. 

 

“Hi, daddy,” Clint says, and him calling him that combined with the smile he’s wearing tell Phil that whatever’s in those bags he just brought in was expensive. Phil growls deep in his chest as he crawls over him, licking his way into his mouth. Clint’s hand stops moving, covering his damp cock so as not to get Phil’s suit dirty, which just has him growling even more - so well trained, such a good boy. They break apart when Phil leans up to look at him. All he wants is to fuck that pretty little mouth and then go eat some dinner, maybe fuck Clint’s mouth again and then go to bed. But not tonight.

 

“I have a couple of calls to make. Go get ready for me. I wanna be inside you in ten minutes,” he tells Clint gruffly before getting up and grabbing the phone again. Clint scrambles away to their bedroom and Phil tries not to think too much about Clint stretching his ass out expressly for Phil to fuck it as he makes his calls. 

 

Thankfully, being second in command of Shield means he can be as brusque as he likes when he calls Tony to confirm the guns they need will be available for the job on Friday and Bruce to tell him his best table is booked for the night from 8 and to ensure there’s cannelloni on the menu. He glances at the clock and thanks the god he doesn’t believe in that it’s only 5.30 and there should be at least enough time to fill up his boy and have him model whatever the fuck he spent all day buying before they have to get ready and head out.

 

Clint’s on the bed with his ass facing the door, gingerly fucking himself on a long dildo braced against the mattress when Phil enters their bedroom. “You ready for me, sweetheart?” he asks. 

“Mmm yes, daddy,” he moans, leaning down to rub his head against the covers to moan again. Phil strips off in moments til he can kneel behind his lover and take the dildo from him. Some days he likes to play for hours with Clint’s ass, stretching it out with toys or just seeing how far stuff can go inside him, til he’s a shaking mess and begging him to stop. Today, however, there’s simply not time so he pulls the dildo out and lets it flop to the floor with a thump, lining himself up and pushing in with the lube Clint’s already slicked himself up with. 

 

It’s almost scary, how good it feels to be inside Clint Barton; it’s as though something was  missing that Phil only manages to find when he’s fucking him. He presses his weight down over Clint til they’re both laying flat and then he moves slowly, in and out of Clint’s wet hot heat. Maybe it’s Phil’s own insecurities or some kind of hangover from Clint’s days as part of Loki’s harem of whores, but when Clint moans into the covers and calls out for “More, please,” Phil can’t help but ask him - tell him who he belongs to. “You, daddy,” he mewls, “my pussy belongs to you.” 

Phil bites the line of muscle at his shoulder next to an older bruise from the last time he did that, and Clint’s muscles clench around him. 

 

They lay tangled together afterwards, Clint’s head on Phil’s scarred up chest, trailing his fingers through the hair dusting its way up Phil’s torso while Phil’s hand rests neatly in the curve of Clint’s back. They need to get going, like always, never enough time to completely lose themselves, but Clint keeps his weight there, keeping Phil right where he wants him. He gets so needy and fretful sometimes, even warier of Fury than Phil is. “Lets run away,” he says quietly, like a kid, like it’s so easy. “We have money. We should go somewhere and never come back. We can live on the beach, fuck whenever we want, eat watermelon.”

His eyes are so blue Phil can see the ocean Clint’s always talking about in them, like this imagined paradise is somewhere inside him, and he aches with the urge to say yes. But they can’t. You don’t just leave Shield. You’re terminated from Shield. That’s how it works. 

Phil can’t answer, not with the words Clint wants, so he just kisses him and tells him to get dressed.

 

At Bruce’s, Clint waits outside, a gun stowed in the shoulder holster hidden beneath his jacket. Phil doesn’t like it when they’re separated, but Fury calls to him from inside the restaurant to ‘Leave your guard dog outside’, so he has little choice. “Boy’s gotta eat,” Phil retorts as he walks in. “He’ll eat,” Fury promises, so Phil bites down on further protest and leaves Clint to stand outside. 

 

He cuts a menacing figure sitting at the table alone, his eyepatch the same black leather as everything else he wears. It ought to be comical, something from a cartoon, but instead it’s terrifying and untouchable. The rest of the room warily watches him, lured by the smell of danger that comes off him in waves; and all he’s doing is sitting at an empty table. 

Phil’s used to Nick’s dramatics - needs must for a mob boss, after all, but it’s still somewhat effective on him. He sits down when a harried waiter pulls out a chair for him and puts a napkin in his lap before being physically repelled by Nick’s laser beam glare. 

 

For the moment it’s only Phil and Fury seated there. Maria, Nick’s wife, is most likely in the bathroom ‘powdering her nose’, Tony and Pepper will be there shortly and Bruce is seeing to another table doing his whole It’s So Good To See You restaurant manager schtick. Phil’s known Nick long enough to know it’s no coincidence that they’re alone and the thread of fear that is always wound around his spine pulls a little tighter. Fury’s ruthless and unpredictable, and though there’s nothing that Phil can think of recently that might mean his number’s up, he can never be completely sure. He cooly matches Nick’s gaze with his usual mild mannered expression and they sit like that for a long moment before Fury’s face cracks into a grin and claps a hand against his shoulder. 

 

Just like that, the tension is gone, whatever test it was apparently passed, and they’re best friends once again. Phil doesn’t comment on it, just accepts the glass of wine Nick pours him and drinks to ‘world peace’ like they always do. “While we’re alone,” he says, leaning in, “I need your reassurance on something.”

“Sure,” Phil says, swallowing the crisp white wine that he knows is Bruce’s best stuff. 

“Your boy,” Nick says, taking a slow sip of his own to draw it out like he draws out everything. Phil patiently waits for him to swallow and lick his lips before continuing. “He used to be one of Loki’s, didn’t he?” 

After a moment of staring dumbly as he tries to figure out what that means, since Nick _knows_ that, he _knows_ Phil took him last time there was a confrontation with the rival mob boss and almost died doing it, that he got Clint clean of the drugs and the bullshit Loki feeds all his ‘girls’, he nods slowly. Nick looks away before continuing. “He’s got too many girls. I want to take some of them out-” Phil looks askance but Fury shakes his head, “-I don’t mean whack ‘em, I just don’t want ‘em to work for Loki anymore. If they want in with us that’s up to them. Girls on drugs don't make as much money."

He looks back and his gaze is even more intense than it was before. “You think he’d be good for it?” 

 

They’ve used Clint before on a few jobs, when they’ve wanted someone up high who can really shoot instead of blundering in like the rest of Fury’s men tend to, but it’s usually at Phil’s discretion; as intensely overbearing as Fury can be, he doesn’t tend to micromanage, so it’s with no small amount of trepidation that Phil replies dumbly: “Clint?”

Nick just looks at him. 

“If you want to kill Loki, Clint could do it, but I don’t want him close. He’s long-distance, you know that.” 

“What if he wasn’t?” 

Phil swallows and he feels like his chest could collapse in on itself as he schools his features into their usual amenable expression. “Go on.”  

 

Fury leans back and scratches his jaw, taking a long breath. “I figure he’s got the inside knowledge, he knows the lay of the land over there better than anyone. The whole thing’ll be an in-out job, I’ve had Maria watching the place and on any given night there’s only one or two of his guys there. Loki doesn’t go there unless he wants to get his dick wet, but hell, if he’s there and he gets taken out too then so be it.”

 

“Last time I ended up in a fucking coma, Nick.” 

“And yet here we are.” 

 

Phil sighs. He doesn’t want to do this. He almost died last time he went so brazenly into Loki’s territory and more than that, he doesn’t want to risk Clint’s safety. “I’ll need guys.”

It’s all the acquiescence Fury needs and he claps him on the back again. 

 

-

 

A few days later they take Phil’s truck - a sturdy, run of the mill SUV, with Clint in the passenger seat. Two of Fury’s guys - some kid called Terry that Phil’s worked with before and another named Charlie - are under the tarp out back. They meet Tony halfway where he’s leaning against the side of his showy sports car, hands over the guns, his burly friend Rhodey standing silently beside the car all the while. 

 

The plan is for Tony - more known for being a loudmouth small time criminal than involved with Shield - to cause a disturbance front of house at Loki’s Titty Bar, the imaginatively named front for the prostitution ring that’s also a convenient distribution network for the drugs he makes his real money from. Then Clint and the other two will go in through the back - Clint taking point since he should know where he’s going - to chase out as many of the girls as they can. They’ll jump into the truck and get taken to the train station with a couple of hundred dollars a piece. Fury doesn’t know about that part but since picking up Clint in a previous sting of this kind, Phil wants to at least try to soothe his conscience. 

 

They pull up in the dimly lit parking lot and wait for Tony’s call; his car is already there so hopefully it won’t be long. Its the first time Phil’s been back since he got stabbed and the glowing pink neon of the sign gives him a queasy, oily feeling in the back of his throat. He doesn’t remember much of Clint hauling him into his car and driving off with him other than figuring he was dying and trying to work out where the guy was taking him, _why_ he was taking him. When the lights of a circus took the place of the neon ones he thought the boy really was an angel and the bright glowing circus entrance was the gate of a lurid heaven. 

 

He’s still never been able to figure it out - why Clint bothered to save him when he could have just run and left him for dead. 

 

And now he’s going to send him right back in there. 

 

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” Phil tells Clint, hand squeezing his thigh. “I know,” he smiles sadly. Phil wants to lean in and kiss him but it’s already bad enough that he’s here. If anyone sees either of them and recognises them it will be bad - it’ll be infinitely worse if they realise what a bargaining chip Clint could be, at least where Phil’s concerned. 

 

“If there’s any trouble-” Phil starts, and Clint rolls his eyes and grins. “I know, I know. ‘There’s lots of bullets but only one of me’. I get it. I’ll be ok, Phil.” 

Phil closes his eyes and shivers as Clint kisses a finger and runs it along the line of Phil’s neck. He grabs his hand and squeezes it tight. “If anything happens to you, I will gut them. If someone touches you-” 

Clint wraps his other hand around Phil’s and laughs. “Shut up alright?”

The phone vibrates against the dashboard and startles Phil. “Five minutes,” he murmurs, and Clint takes the opportunity of his distraction to lace their fingers together properly, looking out at that sick fluorescent light. The feeling of love and protection that surges through Phil as he watches him is almost overwhelming. All he can do is squeeze his hand harder and wait. “When we get home,” Clint says, eyes on the back entrance of the club, “you can fuck me in the pool.” 

Phil huffs, wise to Clint’s obvious ploy of distraction but no less distracted. His nostrils flare as he thinks of sliding into Clint’s perfect ass on the side of their little pool, wet and glistening in the moonlight. “Aren’t you sore from this morning?” he asks just to watch Clint bite his lip. He moans a little, the goddamn pornstar, but shakes his head. “Not sore enough. You’re always so gentle with me.” 

“You complaining? I can be rougher if you want.” 

Clint breathily moans again - it’s too fake - a pantomime, a little pornographic interlude to take Phil’s mind off of things, and all too soon Clint’s slipping his hand from Phil’s to undo his seatbelt and open the door. “Only if you promise,” Clint says before bashing on the side of the truck. Then he’s gone, the three guys sillhouetted in the gloom as Clint shoulders the door open and they slip inside. 

 

Phil waits as patiently as he can, a sawn off shotgun in his lap that he checks and rechecks is loaded as the outline of the building etches itself into his retinas. He’s too far to hear much of anything, but a square of light in the dark void of the building flashes white as a gun is fired and Phil sees the pink glitter of glass raining onto the ground, shone down on by the immaculate light of neon breasts.

 

More time passes, til Phil can feel the roar of his own blood crashing through his veins, the imagined whir of his pacemaker straining to keep him alive as he waits and waits and waits. Clint’s dead, he thinks to himself, as sure as the warmth of what’s left of the barrel of his gun beneath his hands. Dead or dying, shot and bleeding to death in there, with Loki standing over him laughing. There’s no angel to save Clint like there was for Phil. His scar itches and when he puts his hand back on the gun once he’s scratched it, it’s cold again. 

 

The door Phil’s been staring at opens at last, and a thin woman in heels slinks out. Phil waits til she comes closer - she’s blonde, her body the kind of ragged only drugs can make and a desperate aura to match - he swallows and points a thumb towards the flatbed, hears her hitch up onto it as Terry comes out of the door followed by another couple of girls. He points them over and they join their friend, another two behind them but no sign of Charlie or Clint. Phil's stomach knots up even more. 

 

Another few hundred years which can only be seconds and Charlie comes out with another girl and then finally Clint appears. Phil can’t see it but something in the way he walks over tells him he’s injured somehow, the girl he’s with seems to be holding him up even though she’s half his size. Phil’s breath catches in both worry and relief as Clint gets closer and the blackness on his arm reflects shimmery red. The girl - pale as snow with hair that’s lurid in the light - eases him into the front seat of the car once Charlie’s opened it, getting in beside him as Charlie pulls over the tarp. “What are you doing?” Phil asks, but she snaps something in what sounds like Russian and he floors it when gunshots come from the direction of the building. They’re soon on the highway, driving fast enough to lose any pursuers but not so fast as to arouse unwanted attention, the redheaded girl tending to what looks like a deep gash on Clint’s arm. 

 

He’s pale and shining with sweat, his hand finding it’s way to Phil’s across the seat to grasp limply at it. “C’mon Clint. He’s gonna be ok, right? Red, what’s your name? He’s gonna be alright, isn't’ he?” 

She does something that has Clint crying out and then slaps him for his trouble. “He loses... red...” she says, holding out a blood-covered hand to explain what she means. “Blood. Bad.” 

“How? What happened?” 

“I stab,” she replies, tying some kind of fabric around Clint’s arm. 

“You stabbed him?!” 

“I not know. Please. I not know!” 

“S’ok,” Clint murmurs, squeezing Phil’s hand. “She didn’t mean it.” 

“How can you not mean to stab someone!?” 

“I didn’t mean it,” the girl parrots. “I think he one of Loki’s.” 

“She thought I was... one-a Loki’s guys. S’not so bad. It's fine, Phil.”

 

The turn off for the station comes up and Phil drives a little faster than he ought to, all but screaming at Charlie and Terry to get the women out. They go, herding the women with them, and Phil almost forgets the money. “Here,” he says before they get far, handing a roll of notes to one of them. “This is for all of you.” He sees them in the rearview mirror distributing the money amongst themselves as the men warily eye them and uneasily thinks he’s probably made things worse. 

“Hospital?” Phil asks as they pull back into traffic. The girl shakes her head. “Vodka.”

 

-

 

Once Clint’s stitched and drugged up with Phil’s own personal stash of medical supplies, sleeping deeply on the sofa, Phil sits the girl - Natasha - down and makes her drink a tall glass of water. Through pidgin English she tells him of the easy snare into Loki’s web - the promise of a better life in America, drugs and alcohol keeping her placid and obedient until she’d weaned herself off of them in secret, her own escape plan coincidentally copacetic with the plan of Fury’s. She'd lunged at Clint with a knife assuming he was one of Loki’s henchmen come to put a stop to her plotting and then realised he was one if the men on the persona non grata list by the door - Loki's boy whore defector - and begged forgiveness. She then kicked one of Loki’s guys down the stairs and broken another’s nose as she tried to stop Clint’s bleeding before they limped out of the building. 

 

 

Phil glances over at Clint and wonders if he can believe her. Maybe it’s all a ruse, some long play that he can’t see the end of. “What do you want?” he asks Natasha simply, assuming she’ll say money or to go home to Russia. “To fuck Loki,” she replies, spitting the words. “I want see him burn.” 

 

-

 

“Level with me, Phil,” Fury says the next day, having summoned Phil to his poolside patio for brunch. “Are you setting up your own business or are you trying to collect the set?”

As Fury’s chewing-outs go, it’s not so bad. He’s leaning more towards amused rather than angry, which is a good sign.

“The boy got injured and she took care of him. She’s... I don’t think think she wants in on the business. At least in... the capacity she was working in before.” 

Fury leans back on his chair and studies him, the stern look on his face somewhat tempered by the bowl of fruit salad he’s holding in one hand. “Oh?”

“She’s tough. Hates Loki. We might be able to use her.”

Phil consciously doesn’t jiggle his leg as he waits on a Fury-Pause. 

Eventually he purses his lips and says, “Fine. But you don’t have to explain your personal harem to me. If you wanted a girlfriend you don’t need to go stealing them from Loki.” 

“I can assure you, that’s not what happened here.” 

“Whatever.” Fury puts his sunglasses on. Conversation over.

 

-

 

Phil expects Natasha to leave at some point - grab what she can and catch a bus out of town, but she doesn’t. She and Clint seem to hit it off despite her goring of him, and soon he’s taking her out shopping, coming back with bags upon bags of god knows what. Phil supposes he ought to feel jealous, but it’s nice watching them together - Natasha, for all her hard personality, is all soft curves and fullness whilst Clint is as beautifully male as he’s always been. Together, they look right, the perfect couple. It’s more than that too; Natasha is a harsh jagged edge against the pliant sands of Clint, the two of them rubbing off against the other til the wariness leaves her eyes, at least around the house.

 

They bring Natasha on jobs with them - small things at first like money collections, which soon escalate into Natasha holding down a florist threatening to cut off a thumb with a pair of secateurs. It turns out she has a good eye for lies, impressing Clint and Phil alike with her prudent questioning of the people holding out on paying up. In one place she correctly pinpoints a stash of cash just from the way the proprietor glances away. 

 

“She’s amazing,” Phil mutters one day as she secretes one of her knives about her person after cleaning blood off of the end of it, rudely left there from under an unfortunate person’s fingernails. Clint just nods in awe. 

 

Clint’s pretty taken with her, and when the three of them join Fury for dinner - which ought to be fraught and uncomfortable, but she manages to charm the pants off the man - they look so right together Phil’s sure he’ll become surplus to requirements soon enough. The two of them don’t need him. 

 

But Clint always comes back to him and does what he’s told. The Lady Macbeth scenario Phil’s scared of doesn’t seem to be coming and it’s not long before Phil’s happily watching them swim together in matching swimsuits, horseplaying like teenagers. 

 

It’s a surprise, given the way they act together, when Clint asks if Phil minds if he fucks Natasha. “I thought you already were fucking,” he replies, because it’s the truth. There’s a part of him concerned that Natasha’s just going along with that kind of thing because of her history, perhaps seeking to pay her way even though it’s really of no concern what she does or with who. But she comes to Phil herself, asking if he minds. 

“You don’t have to,” Phil tells her. “You know you’re free to go, right?” 

The withering look she gives him would vaporise a lesser man, but Phil’s gotten used to it. “You’ve seen him, haven’t you? He’s beautiful.” That’s all the explanation she’ll give, and it’s enough for Phil, because he agrees. 

 

From there it doesn’t take long before the three of them sleep in the same bed some nights. Often Natasha will go back to her own room and leave Clint to cuddle up with Phil, but sometimes Phil wakes up with Natasha curled up next to him looking impossibly small and perfect. The mornings when he wakes up to see her hair cast over Clint’s chest as they sleep, he feels like he’s cheated something somewhere, to be so lucky. 

 

\--

 

It can’t last, Phil thinks. Knows. Things don’t work out in the end for people like him, and it’s almost worse now that he has both Clint _and_ Natasha to worry about. But then, they have each other, so when Fury has them both stand outside at meets Phil’s not as scared of some phantom marauder running off with them, since he’s seen them fight back to back and grin doing it. Fury gets a little antsy at how efficient a team the three of them make, and Phil can sense something big and potentially ruinous is around the corner. 

 

“A shipment,” Fury says one night on the dock, smoking a fat cigar and looking out at the black sea. Some of his guys just left on a boat to dump something that Phil’s pretty sure is a body. That he’s not sure who it was has him nervous. Not that he thinks it’s one of his own - they’re safe at home probably fucking each other right now - but that Fury’s not told him. It might not even be a body, it could be evidence of one sort or another, drugs gone bad in the lab, a gun that needs to be gone; Phil’s paranoia is off the charts lately.

 

“What kind of shipment?” Phil asks, and Fury won’t say, of course. He just keeps looking out over the ocean, listening to the soft sounds of waves that whisper secrets behind Phil’s back. 

 

“I need to know what car to take,” Phil explains, and that makes Fury turn and laugh, one of his grins on his face that would be incongruous if Phil wasn’t expecting it. 

“On the border, the path through the mountains. In two days, Loki’s going there. There’s a place on the other side where the deal’s going down. You and your little... goof troop need to stop it.”

Phil breathes and nods. That doesn’t sound so bad. “And then you want the shipment?”

“I want the shipment and the money,” Fury replies, watching Phil intensely for any sign of surprise. So he wants Phil and two other people to take out maybe ten men. “No problem,” Phil answers. Fury turns back to stare at nothing. He’s not going to tell Phil how he knows this or who’ll be there. It’s Phil’s job now. Maybe it’s all a setup to get rid of him. 

 

-

 

“But don’t you see,” Clint says for the fourth or maybe fifth time. “This is our chance!” 

Phil shakes his head again. “No. I’m not putting you in that danger, Clint! Either of you!” 

 

Clint’s seeing this as their opportunity to escape, to do the deal, somehow not die, take the money and the ‘shipment’ and run. “We don’t even have to stay in Mexico, Phil. We can go further south. Peru, Chile...” He shrugs, run out of places he knows south of the border. Phil shakes his head again. “We will stay in Mexico,” he promises. “‘Cause we’ll be dead.” 

 

“What do you want to do?” Natasha asks quietly from her place at the dining table. She’s not said much since Phil sat them both down to explain his meeting with Fury. 

Phil takes a deep breath. “I’ll leave you both with enough cash, cars, guns, whatever you need. And you can go. Somewhere safe. Maybe North.” 

She levels her gaze at him and Phil stops talking. “What about fucking Loki?” she asks, spreading her hands. “That’s why I’m here. Are you going to take that away from me?” 

“Natasha,” Phil starts, and then suddenly there’s a knife sticking out of the table in front of him. Clint stops pacing and they stare at it for a second before Natasha slams the table with her fists. “Nyet! No!” She reels something off so fast that Phil’s not sure if it’s Russian or English or something in between. She stops and glares. “You promise me Loki, I get Loki.” 

Clint folds his arms and nods his head behind her. “What she said.”

“But-”

Another knife appears and Phil stops talking. 

 

-

 

They take three cars, mostly because Clint and Phil’s are both impractically small and neither can bear to leave their babies behind. Natasha cusses them both out for being stupid men who don’t even need great big penis extensions, driving the SUV Phil used for the titty bar job and scaring the crap out of them with her driving. Clint rigs up their phones so they can talk as they drive, and maybe it’s because in the back of Phil’s mind he knows this is the last time he’ll probably get to drive his beautiful cherry red girl, but there’s something pretty damn perfect about the way the landscape changes around them as they head south together.

 

It’s dark by the time they stop at a motel - the plan is to sleep a little and get going early so they’re ahead of everything going down. Phil barely registers the clerk’s forehead wrinkle when the three of them take one room, and honestly just wants to get some sleep, but Clint and Natasha have other ideas.

 

They crawl all over him after pressing him down onto the bed, and Clint peels Natasha’s clothes off slowly, like he’s showing her to Phil for the first time. Phil lays back with his hands behind his head and watches them, watches Clint worship her beautiful milky skin, slide off the last of her clothes and stroke her hair when she kneels to blow him. They’re either side of Phil, close enough to touch, but he just watches, waiting to be included. If this was all he got he’d be happy with his lot, but Clint pulls Nat up to kiss her mouth before they both lean down to free Phil’s cock and work on it together, sliding tongues and lips up either side of his shaft before meeting at the top with filthy kisses. He’d be embarrassed at how fast he comes, but it’s like his body’s trying to get everything done at once in the time he has left, desperate and eager. Phil holds on to Natasha while Clint fucks her and she sucks red lovebites in his skin between moans. 

 

“Look at this mess,” Phil gripes afterwards when he studies the marks in the mirror. Natasha smirks from her queenly repose in the middle of the bed. “So everyone knows who you belong to,” Clint says, moving in to make his own little brand on Phil’s neck. He’d normally shoo him away for that, but can’t make himself do it this time. 

 

They eat and then fuck again, Phil more energised this time, coming inside Clint as he fucks Natasha, the two of them practically crushing her beneath them, but she doesn’t mind. Afterwards they lay with her in the middle, the three of them love bitten and exhausted, falling into a deep post-sex sleep.

 

-

 

They get through the tunnels with what should be surprising ease, though Phil’s done it countless times before. A piece of gravel pings against the paintwork of his car and he actually apologises to her loud enough that the others hear and roundly mock him. They park their cars ten miles further along the road than they need to be, at another motel that they check into, piling into the SUV to drive to the place Fury’s marked on the map.

 

The place for the meet is suspicious for it’s lack of... anything. It’s a clearing amongst trees - a picnic site a little way in from the road. Clint goes off to check for good vantage points, a truly terrifying sniper rifle slung over his back. Natasha stays, poking about for traps or other surprises. There’s nothing much of anything, so they hunker down in their respective places and wait.

 

The Mexicans turn up first - Phil has no more information than that to go on. There’s four of them - one older one who looks to be the boss and three heavies, tall and broad and carrying big bags that they don’t let go of. Phil watches from the SUV where it’s parked out of sight behind some trees. It’d be easier to just take these guys out and wait for Loki, but since they don’t know when he’s going to turn up it’s risky. He needs to see what actually happens, too, since he still has no idea what’s changing hands. The size and shape of the bags make him think it’s either drugs or weapons, either of which aren’t all that desirable for a quick, anonymous sell. Still, at least something’s happening. Perhaps this isn’t the ambush Phil thought it might be. 

 

Once it’s dark, a single street light illuminates the scene, throwing everything outside the clearing into pitch darkness. Loki shows up in his flashy green car, a half dozen goons with him. The brother’s not there, and the men who are seem as drugged up as Clint was when Phil first took him; eyes glazed and dead, slow to respond to their master’s voice. 

 

He shakes hands with the head of the Mexicans, offering oily pleasantries that Phil hears courtesy of the bug Natasha planted in between the slats of the picnic table. A goon of his sets a bag on the table that Loki opens to show maybe a few million dollars in cash and the Mexican’s eyes shine. He clicks his fingers and one of his men opens their bag to pull out a brick of what’s probably heroin, but Phil’s not sure til Loki nods at another of his men to sit at the table and try some. The candle he lights is almost picturesque as he heats up a spoon, and Phil watches him fill a syringe and inject himself, bliss washing over his face. One down, then. 

 

Phil knocks gently on the window and sees Natasha walk past, barely dressed in gold and green, stumbling on platform heels as she approaches the group. 

“Loki?” she says, and it’s quiet to Phil because it’s so far from the mic. Everyone - bar the guy happily zoned out at the picnic table - turns to look at her. 

Loki speaks first. “Natasha?”

 

There’s a commotion as predicted, with the Mexican loudly complaining about Loki playing tricks on them, demanding to know what his game is. Loki shakes his head and denies all knowledge, accusing them of trying to mess with him and demanding to know if they’re in cahoots with Fury. 

 

Natasha plays the part of drug addled whore, clinging to Loki’s arm despite his attempts to push her away. She’s the veritable cat among the pigeons, and it doesn’t take long for guns to be drawn and threats to be made. The Mexican’s three men face off against Loki’s five, and it ought to be a clear cut win for Loki with the greater manpower, but his men are visibly wavering. 

 

Natasha giggles and pats her hand against Loki’s face to distract him at the same time as signalling to Phil and Clint that the time to move is now.

 

Phil silently slips out of the car and makes his way to the edge of the group. Loki hisses and pushes Natasha’s hand away, shoving her. She stumbles away and laughs at the gun she now has in her hand, stolen from inside Loki’s coat; a showy gold revolver with a malachite inlay. Still playing the sloppy addict, she points it, and still no one’s clocked Phil lingering on the edge of it all or Clint in the trees. 

 

One of Loki’s men looks at Natasha properly, seeing something he recognises, and Phil sees her cold grin as she levels the gun towards him. There’s more shouting and then a deafening shot that silences everyone. The man slumps to the ground. Then Natasha giggles again and the shouting starts back up, but the first gun levelled at her gets shot clean out of his hand. Natasha grabs that gun and shoots the guy in the leg, kicking another in the balls and then pistol whipping him with both hands as he crumples in pain. Another shot rings out from the trees and a fourth falls. A fifth runs and gets shot in the back by one of Loki’s men and when that man runs one of the Mexicans shoots him. 

 

Loki reaches for the bag of money still sitting on the table but flinches back when a shot narrowly misses his hand. He reaches again and another shot almost gets him. 

 

Phil watches it all from his place in the shadows and it’s like watching Clint and Tasha together in bed - anticipating one another’s moves in beautiful syncopation. A man reaches for Natasha and Phil shoots him for his trouble, a sickening spray of blood from his arm as the bullet passes right through him. 

 

By now there’s just the Mexican, Loki and his hazed out henchman, everyone else disarmed and on the floor or just disarmed and in the wind, wounded. Loki stands there, white with rage, Natasha’s gun pointed unwaveringly at his head. 

“What do you want, whore?” Loki spits, and Clint shoots a bullet through the padding of one of the shoulders in his suit. 

Phil steps into the light, his gun held loosely at his side. Mexican Guy demands to know what’s happening and Phil points the gun at him before turning to look. He can feel Clint rolling his eyes at his showboating, but he can’t help himself. This is just too good.

“You can go, take your drugs and leave. Or you can stay and get shot. It’s your call.” 

The man looks between the three of them and swears, grabbing the bags and dragging them off to one of the other cars. 

 

Loki chuckles mirthlessly and puts his hands up. “Well, you seem to have outwitted me. Somehow defied death just to come and shoot me like a dog. How tediously predictable.”

Phil purses his lips and shakes his head. “No. That’s not what’s going to happen.” A thud comes from somewhere in the trees and then Clint walks into the light. Loki takes a moment to recognise him properly but when he does what’s left of the colour in his face blanches away. 

“You can have the money,” he says, and Phil would be lying if he said he wasn’t disappointed. 

“You crack so easily,” Natasha says. “We haven’t even started yet.”

“Well what do you want then?” Loki asks, indignance rising in his voice as though he has anything to bargain with. 

 

Clint grabs Loki’s arms and hauls them behind him, a pair of handcuffs clicking neatly over his wrists. “I should have killed you all when I had the chance,” he spits. Clint prods him towards the picnic table, pushing him onto the end of the bench and then tying him to it as best he can with ropes. 

 

Natasha has Loki’s gun still trained on him, and once Clint’s done with the ropework he grabs the bag of cash and nods to Phil as he throws it. “Go wait in the van,” he says, and that was never a part of the plan, but they both walk over to kiss him in turn before going back to the SUV, trying not to relish Loki’s screams too much as they move in to exact a retribution they’ll never speak of afterwards.

 

-

 

Maybe an hour later, Clint and Natasha come back to the van, both of them buzzing with a terrifying energy that Phil’s glad to be on side with. They bring the drugs, the money _and_ the zoned out henchman with them, and don’t even explain before setting him in the flatbed. They leave him outside the first vaguely appropriate place they find - a vet, with $200 in his pocket - before going back to the motel. 

 

Clint and Natasha tear into one another, biting and sharp and hard. Phil lets them have their way with each other before pulling them in close and cooing how proud of both of them he is, how fucking brilliantly perfect they are til the three of them are sobbing and whimpering and clinging onto one another with promises of belonging.

 

They don’t sleep, as close to the carnage as the motel is, so they pack up and hit the road when it starts to get light, selling the SUV and their two beautiful sports cars to a cheap dealer for a fifth of what they’re worth. The man salutes them and says how it sure looks like the cars need to be painted, how all three of them’ll be in the shop for a long time with all their non-existant damage, that they might even just have to be broken down for parts. 

 

Phil and Clint say their goodbyes while Natasha rolls her eyes, before picking out a new fast car for the three of them, just enough space for their few things and that bag of cash, shining deep metallic blue in the mid-morning sun. They pay cash and the dealer winks and salutes again. Phil thanks him from behind dark glasses and settles behind the wheel of their new car, glancing into the back to see Natasha lay her 50s style scarf-covered head on Clint’s shoulder. He guns the engine and swings the car out onto the open road. 

 

It’s a long shot, but maybe they’ll make it to the ocean after all. 

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilery warnings/explanation of some of the tags: 
> 
> It is implied that Loki meets a horrible end at the end of this fic, off screen, at Clint and Natasha's hands in retribution for all sorts of misdeeds wrought against them (which are also offscreen and in the past).
> 
> Clint and Natasha were previously forced to be prostitutes and were both addicted to drugs. So there are obviously inherent non-con issues within that, particularly so with Natasha, a victim of sex trafficking. None of this is shown in the fic itself. The Clint and Natasha we see in this fic are drug free and are no longer sex workers (Clint is 'rescued' by Phil and later the two 'rescue' Natasha). 
> 
> At the beginning of this fic, Clint and Phil are in a relationship and later on Natasha joins them in that relationship. Each doing so of their own free will.
> 
> There is one example of an original character using heroin.
> 
> There are a bunch of OC gang members that get shot and killed (heroin guy does not get killed).
> 
>  
> 
> If you feel that anything else needs to be warned for or tagged, please let me know :) Trying to figure out how to warn and tag this was a nightmare so I may have missed something.


End file.
